by Ross Heaven
Nine hours later the effects were still going strong, and I was still absorbed in the insights I was receiving. I was also playing with the window of opportunity where it seemed I’d become superpsychic and I could ask anything and receive an answer. When needing help to walk outside La Gringa’s hostel where I was staying, the inner dialogue continued. A sympathetic assistant was asked to walk beside me to ensure I didn’t fall down the hundred stairs of San Blas while in my nebulous state of mind, guiding me to where I wanted to go. After this excursion where my spirit body felt as if it was walking a step ahead of my physical one, I said thank you to the beautiful man for his help. However, I was inspired to not mention that the enlightened cactus in my head was also sharing interesting details about the man’s personal life and what he was thinking about.
Along the way I had become aware of how I was slurring my words, stumbling, and that my matted hair (from having sat out in the rain) and dilated pupils had given me an extraterrestrial appearance. I thought how I’d probably be embarrassed if I wasn’t feeling so much unconditional love for everyone, including myself, and wondered what the women were thinking whose eyes shifted away after showing alarm when I walked by. San Pedro interrupted my thoughts with:
If you had cleaned yourself up out of fear to look “acceptable” before the others could see you, they would have missed a learning opportunity for their spiritual growth. What you see in another and judge as wrong shows you what you want to accept and love in yourself. You are only judging yourself.
This teaching continued with recognizing the sacredness and necessity for the “dark” (as in the yin, opposite of the yang, “light”) in all its manifestations, especially in ourselves. It said that the dark has a right to be (“it is as it is”) and while being aware of choosing to place attention on what felt better, the negative was not to be judged as unworthy of unconditional love or inferior to what is perceived as that of the “light.” Respecting the darkness, not pushing it away and demonizing it, was also critical to the shifting of consciousness that is happening globally now. There was much more to it that I’m still recollecting and beginning to understand. In May the following year I returned to La Gringa’s garden in Cusco and I joined in four other ceremonies. Each one went deeper into my consciousness and the “here-now”—that state of existence where I’d be in my hostel dorm afterward and it would be just a room with two beds existing somewhere in space. It was like everything other than the room and the beds was brought into my five senses on a need-to-know basis. I had the impression that the world beyond the door (and the bathroom, fortunately) rematerialized its collectively agreed-upon thoughtforms on cue with my doubtless faith that it would be there.
While en route to Peru a painful childhood memory had been persistently in my thoughts. Brought to mind again during my third day, I was guided to transform it into one where I became the adult I am now, with awareness of the feelings of the players in the drama, to speak my truth that I couldn’t then and to heal the memory in a way that included humor. That memory now holds no negative emotional charge when recalled and no longer persists. The healing of it feels complete, and I sense it also affected the ones who were involved as I remembered them.
I then saw and experienced myself as a baby in the year of my birth, looking up at my parents who were in love with life, each other, and with me. From their energy I sensed how I was a beautiful gift to them, that I was unconditionally good enough, and that my existence in their lives was welcomed. In the previous work I had done with ayahuasca two weeks prior, before drinking the tea I had asked for healing by being spiritually “rebirthed.” I was thinking that maybe I could, in a sense, skip years of troubleshooting and just delete all defective “Robyn” files and reboot the whole system.
Ayahuasca had powerful wisdom of her own and, as it turned out, I received something different than what I thought I wanted. In my San Pedro healing now, I was told that a renurturing of my child self rather than a rebirthing would help me as an adult to know a greater sense of inner worth and love in my life. It was then that I was shown the infant scene I have mentioned and realized that my parents were in fact me as a more spiritually evolved female and male version. As well, I could feel the healing assistance of the mother energy of the Earth and the father energy of the sun as I lay on my back in the garden.
Later, in the background of what was like my conversation with God, my rational mind began to fret about the welfare of my teeth. I’ve had years of lectures by dentists to brush my teeth after eating anything, especially candy. My thoughts lethargically obsessed about how I should get up now and find my toothbrush. (I noticed that even thinking of doing this task while on San Pedro made me feel very heavy, yet to walk through the garden was like floating.) I got the message then that
your physiology is being well looked after [while on the plant medicine]. The food and drink on the teeth are not the primary causes of dental deterioration; there is much that’s involved on a subtle energy level. Your teeth will decay and bone loss will occur if you consistently feel powerless to effect change and lose interest in participating in life. As well, consumption of chemicals, devitalized food, and demineralized sugar weakens the auric field around the body and can allow in energies that feed off the body’s life force. The mind can be influenced by their presence to resonate with lower-vibration thought and cravings. Consume foods that have a high natural mineral content as it will strengthen and protect the entire body.
In another ceremony there was instruction about how to deal with a chronic pain around a particular area (uterus):
Excessive thinking brings heat into one’s head, creating coldness and contraction in the body. Keep the “pot” stirred and warm by placing your attention there [the lower abdomen] deliberately with love. Do more movement such as dancing and yoga. With pain, breathe from the belly, breathe love and acceptance into the area of pain, breathe it down into the Earth and ask that the energy be received and transmuted.
So far, the healing given during that time has resulted in a significant diminishment of menstrual pain. I was told that it would be a gradual process and that I would need to work on using the knowledge given and avoid using chemical pain-blocking medication to suppress it. Also from my first San Pedro ceremony, I had asked for and held an intention to heal from celiac disease. Since that day my doctor has told me I am about 75 percent healed of this disease that had affected me my entire life.
I was guided to see that a health therapy (a deep-tissue abdominal massage that facilitates emotional detox) that I was planning on studying was something my heart was saying wasn’t for me at this time. My mind had been giving good-feeling reasons why it was a fantastic idea, but I couldn’t understand why it was hard to visualize myself doing the work at my studio. The pragmatic commentary during the San Pedro session helped. “Do you really want to be digging your elbows into other people’s cesspools of emotions, stirring up what you haven’t completely healed in yourself? Can you see your clients needing to get off the table to help you feel better?” Following that I was given many insights into how healing works and the therapies that work only on the energy field soon becoming more used than physical treatments.
There was a lot taught about the truth in emotions and about paying attention to what actually feels better in contrast to following what the mind wants. “You had become like a big head dragging your body behind you as if it were an extra appendage whose purpose you had forgotten.” I was told that when you live from the heart work is effortless effort.
Use your mind to figure out how to read a map and get you to the airport in time, but not to choose the location without checking with the heart or deciding what will bring you joy. Happiness is not found on the path of struggle. Set your intention for happiness and then go out and play and your greater good will find you there.
In my last communion with the spirit of San Pedro, there was insight given about oneness and how we all come from the same one source, reminding
me of a quote from the late comedian Bill Hicks: “We all are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.”
Meanwhile, during this time whenever one of the members of the group I was sharing the ceremony with came into my line of sight, my mind prepared to put up its deflector shield of aloofness so I could keep to myself and not have to make conversation. Most of my life I held a strong belief that I was socially awkward and didn’t quite fit into the mainstream world of how things are done. I preferred to blend into the background. San Pedro commented on this with amusement.
You don’t recognize yourself do you? You shrink down in fear around people but they are you wearing another face. You are all gods, all of God. You feel separate and it is real but understand that it’s not truth. Your reality is the hallucination. All are playing a role in each other’s drama for learning but you are one being playing all the roles. You are waves in the infinite ocean of one pure Spirit.
Later in the journey I felt inspired to create a new reality for my life (since I was a goddess, after all). It was ideal to do this while dwelling in the right-brain world of infinite possibility and with San Pedro’s guidance. I was reminded that “it is done unto you as you believe,” that I still had to do the work when I got back into my everyday life to hold the vision of my dream and faith in its reality now while the “old” life transitioned into the new. I had fun with that, regardless if the results unfold.
Update, four months later: while not a magic eraser of problems I have seen undeniable evidence over these months that things have improved for the better and that they’re continuing to do so. Situations like my reaction within a drama that previously would have ungrounded me, setting me back into a pattern of depression or an energy-draining verbal retaliation, the negative “hook” to my old programming, is now more often seen by me from an interested but detached point of view. It’s much easier to let it be as it is and move on. And insights have flowed into my mind, notably during times when something extraordinarily shocking has occurred (as happened recently), and the sense I get is that connection to huachuma’s wisdom never fully leaves.
San Pedro also gave me the gift of seeing the source of the thought patterns that created certain problems for me and where better choices could be made. It was always clear that it would be up to me to put what was learned into action for it to work its miracle of transformation. Otherwise, what was offered from the medicine as tools for healing would just become interesting “food for thought.”
My San Pedro journeys turned out to be a return ticket to go out of mind. It took me on an endless trip deep into my heart, connecting with my soul and everything else through the oneness of all, carefully losing some of my heavier emotional baggage along the way. I give thanks, too, that this experience is available to anyone who may decide to simply travel to Peru.
12
The Universal Heart
Daniel Moler
Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror
KAHLIL GIBRAN, THE PROPHET
For our anniversary my wife and I attended a mesada, a medicine ceremony of the San Pedro cactus (or huachuma). I was completely terrified.
A couple of years ago I underwent an entheogenic experience without the proper ceremony or setting, and it ripped me to shreds. I felt torn away from the world in a horrific, isolated way. Instead of making me better it made me worse, resurfacing old haunts within my psyche. I opted never to go back to that space ever again.
But as circumstance would have it, synchronicity aligned us to this juncture. As scared as I was to undergo another “psychedelic” experience, the opportunity seemed to fit just right with the stars. The shaman assured me everything would be fine and he would be there to facilitate my healing. I also have a heart condition that arises during panic, derived from when I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He said San Pedro would take care of that too, calling it what his wife termed “a masterful lover.”
The San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) is one of the oldest entheogenic substances used in shamanic practice that we know of. Originating from the Chavín culture in northern Peru, San Pedro can be found in carvings dated as far back as 1300 BCE. The name San Pedro was adopted during the early European colonization of Latin America. A legend exists of Saint Peter using the mystifying powers of the cactus to uncover the hidden keys to heaven to share with all humanity. Scholars of shamanic studies Ross Heaven and Howard Charing state, “Considered the ‘maestro of maestros’ San Pedro enables the shaman to open a portal between the visible and the invisible world for his or her people.”1
San Pedro is known to be a great healer for all ailments mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. This may all sound baffling to the average person but the shaman’s claim is that nature is minded: “A plant may not talk but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive.”2
As we arrived at the shaman’s lodge my fear boiled inside me, causing my heart to throb so hard it affected my vision. There were approximately twenty people attending the ceremony including the two auxillios (the shaman’s proxies, available to assist with our needs and hold the space as a sacred container). We waited nervously outside the main lodge as we listened to the shaman rattle and sing inside. We were called in one by one.
I was placed in the northeast section of the chamber. The shaman knew who we all were weeks in advance, spending this time preparing the San Pedro brew with our names, our prayers. As well, he had systematically configured the room to align our energies with the four cardinal points. As we were all seated he gently explained the process of the night. Then we opened the ceremony by charging the mesa.
A mesa is “a shamanic altar containing ritually empowered objects, which are aesthetically arranged on a sacred textile to reflect the system of medicine work employed by its carrier.”3 The mesa also reflects the four directions, symbolizing the four elements that we paid homage to: Pachamama in the south, representing Mother Earth; Mama Killa in the west, representing water, Grandmother Moon; Wirococha in the north, representing air, the world of Spirit; and Inti in the east, representing fire, the Sun. Finally, K’uychi in the center is charged, the universal hub of all that is, the axis mundi.
The shaman facilitated an energetic interaction between us and the mesa, which would be the central anchor of the night’s ceremony. All nourishment, even water, would come only from the mesa for the rest of the evening.
The shaman blessed the San Pedro brew and drank it first. He drinks as we drink, enabling him to energetically see, diagnose, and treat our ailments. Then he called us up to drink from the same cup, one by one. When my name was called I almost passed out in anxiety. When I stood I shook with fright, dizzy with heart-pounding anxiety. Maybe I can back out I told myself. I don’t have to do this do I? I was constantly rehashing Terence McKenna’s statement in my mind: “A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means, ‘This is real.’”4 I also recalled the shaman’s advice to me weeks before: “If you are afraid of it that means it is exactly what you need to do.” I have to overcome my fear.
I placed myself on the south side of the mesa, facing the rest of the chamber. I clasped the cup in my trembling hands and whispered my prayers into the brew: “Give me courage San Pedro. Help me overcome my fear, my pain. I want to know how to love. Make me a vessel for Spirit.” I held the cup up to the members of the room. “Salud!” Everyone repeated back: “Salud!” And I drank. No way back now, I said to myself, “Best just surrender to the ride.”
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. . . .
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter poison by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
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Therefore trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity.5
Everyone finished, and we settled into our positions. The shaman and his auxillios blew out the few remaining candles in the chamber, making it completely dark save for the faint moon glow through the windows. Huachuma ceremonies generally take place at night in utter darkness. Mythologist Joseph Campbell asserts, “Since the yonder world is a place of everlasting night, the ceremonial of the shaman has to take place at night.”6 The sudden darkness was very jarring and I readied myself for the unknowable.
Before beginning his healing work the shaman appointed the first hour to allow San Pedro to work within us. I focused intently on my breathing, trying to calm my heart. In and out, fueling my body with the rhythm of breath.
Before long I began to see and feel the San Pedro in my stomach. It appeared as a luminescent purple globule inside of me, reaching out with octopus-like tentacles. I remembered what McKenna terms the “violet psychofluid,” seen by shamans under the influence of the entheogen ayahuasca:
A substance that is described as violet or deep blue and that bubbles like a liquid. . . . This violet liquid comes out of your body; it also forms on the surface of the skin like sweat. The Jivaro do much of their magic with this peculiar stuff. . . . The nature of this fluid is completely outside of ordinary experience: it is made out of space/ time or mind.7
This “psychofluid” churned within and around me to discover the ill inside. It was immediately setting itself to work! Of course it was not long until it latched onto my heart, which was racing in panic. As the “psychofluid” enveloped it, my heart began to race even faster. My fears became paramount: Why was I here? Can I still get out of this? What if I die? What if I have a heart attack? What if I come out of this experience with permanent psychosis?